BCCI reportedly holds conference call with Ravi Shastri, Virat Kohli after skipper’s quotes on Rohit Sharma

Before the start of the Sydney ODI, Indian cricket team skipper Virat Kohli had said there was absolutely no communication or clarity over the situation regarding Rohit Sharma’s fitness for the tour of Australia. Rohit Sharma, who had played the IPL 2020 and given Mumbai Indians their fifth title, had missed some games due to a hamstring injury but when he was excluded from the touring party for Australia, he played the IPL and that raised plenty of criticism over the way the BCCI communicated with the IPL franchise and the player when it came to selection.

However, in a report on Mumbai Mirror, the BCCI has tried to sort things out by doing a conference call among the key personnel involved in the miscommunication of Rohit Sharma’s fitness. The key people in that meeting were Virat Kohli, Ravi Shastri, members of the NCA monitoring Rohit Sharma’s fitness and chief selector Sunil Joshi. According to the Mumbai Mirror report, the final date for the assessment of Rohit Sharma’s injury and whether he will be available for the tour of Australia will be taken on December 11.

Even if he is passed fit, there are some logistical issues for Rohit Sharma to get to Australia. There are no international flights until December 31. Rohit Sharma will have to serve out the mandatory 14-day quarantine unless Sourav Ganguly successfully manages to negotiate a reduced quarantine time for Rohit Sharma with Cricket Australia. However, Rohit is still ruled out of the Tests in Adelaide and Melbourne.

Lack of clarity, confusion

When the squad was picked for the tour, Rohit Sharma’s name was excluded after he had missed a couple of games due to a hamstring injury. However, the day the squad was selected, Mumbai Indians uploaded a photo of him practicing. To confound matters further, Rohit Sharma played the IPL 2020 playoffs after BCCI president Sourav Ganguly said that Rohit’s hamstring injury needed to be managed. Mumbai Indians went on to win the title and immediately, Rohit Sharma went to the NCA for rehabilitation.

The whole episode of Rohit Sharma’s unavailability for the tour to Australia has prompted Indian cricket team skipper Virat Kohli to state that the whole episode has created a lot of uncertainty. In the pre-match press conference, Virat Kohli said, “Before we had the selection meeting in Dubai, we had got an email two days before that, which said that he is unavailable for selection [as] he has picked an injury during the IPL. And it mentioned there was a two-week rest and rehab period. The pros and cons and the implications of the injury has been explained to him and he understood that. And he was unavailable for selection. That was the information we got on mail before the selection meeting. After that he played in the IPL, so we all thought he would be on that flight to Australia, which he wasn't. And we had no information whatsoever on the reason on why he is not traveling with us.”